The GOP's habit of eating its own

But in historical terms, it should not have come as a shock. House Republicans have been eating their young since the Eisenhower era, and the race has been always to the right.

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If it seems hard to imagine a leaner, hungrier conservative Cassius than Cantor, rewind to the Cold War. That’s when Joe Martin, a rock-ribbed conservative newspaper editor and publisher from Massachusetts (who served two stints as the only GOP speaker between 1931 and 1995), was toppled from the House leadership by a self-described “gut-fighter” from the Midwest: Charles Halleck of Indiana.

Halleck was pudgy and pugnacious — with a W.C. Fields nose and a prodigious thirst for distilled spirits. Cantor’s primary nemesis — a virtual unknown named Dave Brat — is by contrast Simon-pure. But the pattern of insurgent attacks on the establishment is well-established.

“Republicans are great for killing off their kings,” Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the longest-serving member of the House, told me a few years ago. GOP leaders have traditionally not been toppled by peaceful transitions, but by internal coups. The only shock about Cantor’s loss is that it was handed to him not by his rival internal colleagues, but by voters in his own Virginia district — voters whom he had courted for years.

In September 2010, when Speaker John Boehner unveiled the GOP leadership’s “Pledge to America” in a Northern Virginia lumber warehouse, Cantor stood at his side, coiled forward as if ready to leap to the microphone. He was not invited to speak, and his countenance reflected his disappointment. The Republicans reclaimed the House that November, but Cantor’s place in the order since has never been clear.

Was he a team player, or a cobra waiting to strike? Was he helping his speaker, or feathering his own nest? It has been conventional wisdom among the D.C. chattering class that Cantor would someday, somehow, make a bid to topple Boehner’s speakership.

No one predicted that Cantor would be undone by the conservative tea party tide he helped to unleash. And yet, despite outspending his opponent by a factor of more than 40 to 1, he was.

It’s an old story, this GOP circular firing squad.

Charlie Halleck himself was replaced as Republican House leader by an up-and-comer from Michigan named Gerald Ford, who led a caucus disgruntled by Halleck’s cooperation with John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A decade later, when Ford ascended to the vice presidency, and then the presidency, there was an opening for John Rhodes of Arizona. Rhodes was then replaced by Robert Michel of Illinois, who was eventually forced out by the insurgent Newt Gingrich of Georgia. Gingrich’s stormy tenure — he was ousted after just four years — produced the comparatively calm regime of Dennis Hastert of Illinois, but for much of that time, the real power lay with his colleague “The Hammer” — Tom DeLay.

It’s perhaps no accident that Cantor was defeated by an insurgent named Brat, an upstart conservative Roman Catholic who received a master’s degree from Princeton Theological Seminary, the alma mater of Watergate conspirator Jeb Stuart Magruder. Brat’s platform: Washington is awash in corrupting cash, and it’s time for a change.

Cantor’s loss wasn’t narrow. It was a rout. And his defeat all but assures that any hope of comprehensive immigration overhaul — never too likely — has gone glimmering into the mist of the Rio Grande on a hot Texas morning. His defeat also recalibrates the immediate future of Boehner himself, who has openly mused aloud about what’s next, and whether he will continue as speaker. Cantor’s defeat removes Boehner’s principal rival, but will also embolden the anti-Boehner tea party caucus’s conviction that neither Boehner nor Cantor ranked as a true believer. Still, Boehner’s status now seems more secure.

In the 2010 midterms that made him speaker, Boehner did his best to surf benignly on the tea party wave, acknowledging its power but determined not to be swamped by it. Instead, in the years since, Boehner has been overwhelmed by the not just no, but “Hell, no!” tone he set in opposing Obamacare on the House floor.

Now Boehner’s entire unsettled leadership team has been shaken to the core. Cantor’s departure as majority leader leaves an opening for Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to rise from his No. 3 position as majority whip. The race for McCarthy’s slot will itself be intense.

On the eve of Boehner’s ascendancy to the speakership after his party’s victory in 2010, he told a group of Washington reporters that he was determined to change business as usual in Congress, in the wake of the bitterness attending the passage of the Affordable Care Act, among other things.

“Both parties have built up a lot of scar tissue that prevents members from working together again,” he said then. “But I’m going to tell you what: We’re not going to be able to solve the big problems in our country until members begin to work with each other again and trust each other once again. Ain’t gonna happen overnight.”

Now, overnight on a single Tuesday, Boehner’s world has changed again.

It remains to be seen what the speaker will make of Wednesday morning — and the rest of this roiling midterm year.